New Child Benefit Rules 2
Claim 20129
This family consists of a couple, with 4 dependant children made a claim for Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit. Unfortunately they did not qualify, as income was too high.
In November 2009, the rules for working out Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit changed to allow us to ignore Child Benefit when calculating entitlement. This means that more families will be entitled to benefit.
West Somerset Council benefits service is keen to ensure that as many people as possible are able to claim the correct amount of benefit entitlement. This will help to prevent deprivation and hardship in our community.
We checked our records to try to identify people that may now be entitled to benefit because of the new rules.
We sent a letter to this family with the change in legislation inviting them to apply again with the new rules which allowed us to ignore their Child Benefit.
They provided the necessary information and we reassessed their claim with the £59.60 a week disregard. The family now qualified for £20.36 a week Housing Benefit and £1.49 a week in Council Tax Benefit. This gives this family £1136.20 a year in extra income, and so reducing some of their financial burdens.